The new face of Syria crisis

Omran Daqneesh's image shattered human conscience across the world on Wednesday. His face, bloodied and covered with dust, has become the new face of suffering in Aleppo. What hurts the most is the silence and the dazed look as the five-year-old boy sits on a seat in an ambulance after being rescued from a building that was hit in an air strike in Aleppo. The haunting video of Daqneesh went viral on social media soon after it was released by Aleppo Media Centre.

After the haunting image of three-year-old Syrian refugee, Aylan Kurdi, whose body washed up on the Turkish beach last year, this photo is breaking hearts across the world. Daqneesh's clueless face speaks volumes of the horrors Syria is facing. Daqneesh was rescued with his three siblings and his mother and father. None sustained major injuries, but their apartment building collapsed shortly after the family was rescued.

Daqneesh image and other messages were widely circulated on social media in an attempt to wake humanity to the cause of Syria.

According to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, more than 14,000 children under the age of 18 have died during the Syrian crisis. While some parts of Aleppo are controlled by the government, backed by Russian warplanes, remaining areas are held by the rebels.

What started in 2011 as an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has turned into a civil war of disastrous proportions, with 4.8 million refugees who have fled to other countries, and 6.6 million internally displaced in Syria.